Theyd been by themselves on the road since their mother and older sister were killed two weeks before, at first traveling with some people from their town but then blending in with the endless stream of other refugees moving southward along the pushed-up roads and embankments of the river valleys.

Much of the story is set in what was then Leningrad, a city of contrasts: the home of "Pushkin and the tsars, of granite embankments and lace ironwork," where people stood in line for necessities like toilet paper and milk.

Between the 1760s and 1830s, the period of "canal mania," the English countryside was torn to bits by gangs of mostly-Irish "navvies," digging, tunnelling, heaping up embankments, hacking deep cuttings through obstructive hills; building ingenious staircases of locks, shapely bridges and high-flying aqueducts, to create the great spider web of canals that was Britain's main transportation infrastructure in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

Millions of people could be hit by floods because infrastructure, such as dykes and embankments, is weak, and the lack of funds means that some communities have not been able to adequately reconstruct their homes or restore their livelihoods as farmers, the group said in a report, Flooded and Forgotten.

Sukhumbhand Paribatra is releasing his own crisis updates as soldiers and volunteers race to shore up protective embankments and dig canals to prevent the flood waters from inundating areas around the city, which represents more than 40% of Thailand's economic output.